Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley (2016–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Age of Extremes - full transcript

LUCY WORSLEY: I'm traveling through
Russia, to learn about the most powerful

European royal families
since medieval times,

the Romanovs.

I've seen how the victories
of Peter the Great

won him control of the Baltic sea,
placing Russia firmly on the world stage.

At home, Peter built
the magnificent city of St. Petersburg,

and he dragged his country kicking
and screaming into the 18th century.

Peter the Great was a hard act to follow,
but in the century following his death,

two of his successors
would bring Russia glory

that Peter could only have dreamt of.

The era was dominated
by Catherine the Great,



possibly the most powerful woman
in history.

She was super bright and super ambitious,

and Russia would enjoy a golden age
during her reign.

Famed for her collections,
both of art and of lovers,

Catherine's military success transformed
Russia into a major European power.

Not bad for a ruler
without a single drop of Russian blood.

Catherine's grandson Alexander I

was forced to defend her legacy
when Europe collapsed into turmoil.

But Alexander would save the continent

from the mightiest military leader
of the age, Napoleon.

And he'd even lead Russian forces
onto the streets of Paris.

But these extraordinary achievements
took place against a turbulent backdrop.

There were rebellions and murders,
and military disasters.

This is the story of the second great age
of the Romanovs, an age of extremes.



(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

LUCY: This is
the 18th-century Palace of Peterhof,

overlooking the Gulf of Finland.

It was founded by Peter the Great,

one of only two Romanov monarchs
to have been given that title.

The other was Catherine the Great.

She inherited the palace
when she seized the throne in 1762,

nearly 40 years after Peter's death.

But I bet Catherine never did
what I'm about to do.

- Let's go.
- Thank you.

Are we going to hold hands all the way?

Just this place.

- Very gallant, I like it.
- Be careful.

LUCY: I'm going, not just
behind the scenes but beneath them.

And I'm not sure
that I've dressed appropriately.

- Down that hole?
- Yes.

That's really quite small and wet.

- Yes.
- (LAUGHS)

- Okay.
- Be careful. Be careful.

- Watch your head.
- This is good.

LUCY: Hey, hey, hey!

Peterhof has one of the biggest sets
of fountains in the world,

remarkably all of them powered
by natural springs and gravity,

not by pump as I'd expected.

MAN: Five...

BOTH: Four, three, two, one...

- Go!
- Go!

(WATER GUSHING)

There are 100 fountains here
just in the cascade area,

and I think my favorite
is this golden frog.

Catherine first saw Peterhof
and its fountains in 1744.

At the time, Peter the Great's daughter
Elizabeth was on the throne.

Russia was enjoying an economic boom,

partly due to the lucrative
Baltic trade routes

that Peter had opened up.

So Elizabeth had lots of money
to indulge her taste for splendor.

She had a tame architect.
An Italian called Bartolomeo Rastrelli,

and here at the Palace of Peterhof, she
set him off on a major rebuilding project.

(WATER GUSHING)

The Romanovs wanted palaces that rivaled

the finest French royal buildings
like Versailles.

The French were seen by Russia's elite
as the standard setters for taste and art,

but this strikes me as being
slightly too lavish, almost gaudy?

You can't help sensing the chip
on the Romanovs' shoulder,

their need to convince foreign diplomats

that Russia
was a sophisticated European country,

not some backward Eastern despotism.

Rastrelli created a series
of grand palaces for the Romanovs.

There was the magnificent Winter Palace
in St. Petersburg,

now home of the Hermitage Museum.

The Catherine Palace
was named after Elizabeth's mother,

who'd succeeded Peter the Great
to the throne.

But who was going to inherit all this
Baroque bling when Elizabeth was gone?

Elizabeth never married.

There were rumors
of illegitimate children,

given away to be brought up by servants,

but she never had
an acknowledged son or daughter.

So, she exercised
her Russian sovereign's right

to choose her own successor.

She alighted upon her nephew.

The only trouble was,

he was a 14-year-old German boy
who'd never set foot in Russia.

His name was Karl Peter Ulrich,
Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.

He was a grandson of Peter the Great
through his mother.

Elizabeth now needed
to find young Peter a bride.

She settled on a minor
but well-connected German princess

called Sophie Friederike Auguste
of Anhalt-Zerbst.

So in 1744, Sophie came to Russia
and adopted a Russian name,

Ekaterina, or Catherine.

But this teenage union quickly became
an unhappy one.

Peter was disfigured by smallpox,

yet still managed to embarrass his wife
by having a mistress.

Catherine claimed that he was
a twisted voyeur,

who even tortured animals.

When she came to write her memoirs,

Catherine said how long and dismal

the summers had been
at the Palace of Peterhof.

She didn't get on with her aunt-in-law,
the Empress Elizabeth,

nor her husband who was only interested

in practicing military drills,
with his very long-suffering entourage.

So Catherine instead turned to reading,

particularly the philosophers
of the French Enlightenment,

Diderot and Voltaire.

This was heady stuff for a member
of an autocratic ruling family.

One of the most significant factors
of Catherine's personality that came out

when she was very young
and throughout her life,

was she really believed
in self-improvement.

She had this great urge to be educated

and that for a woman of her time
was unusual.

And the determination to find out for
herself for learning as much as she could.

She enjoyed the sense of being
at the forefront of European thought

and bringing it to this rather...
Place she perceived rather backward.

By her early 30s,
Catherine had given birth to a son

and to a short-lived daughter,

and she'd started taking lovers
of her own.

He was just a warm-up,
we'll pass over him.

But this is Stanislaw Poniatowski,
the future King of Poland.

He was witty and charming,
and everything that her husband wasn't.

By 1761 though,
she'd moved on to Grigory Orlov.

He was a dashing young artillery officer.

It was said that he would dance
gigantic dances and make gigantic love.

His relationship with Catherine
got very serious,

it started to go beyond just
a romantic intrigue.

Catherine and Orlov agreed

that Peter just wasn't up to the job
of ruling the country.

But in 1761, Peter succeeded to the throne
following Elizabeth's death.

He was now the Emperor.

What he didn't know though,

was that his Empress
was plotting against him.

When Peter actually did succeed,

it quickly became clear
he wasn't going to survive.

He annoyed people,
the military, the church,

and he was a disaster from the start.

What one is aware of with Catherine
is that she had an enormous self-belief.

Having educated herself she was quite sure

that she could run this enormous country
and she could improve it.

LUCY: The intrigue came to a head
on the morning of the 28th of June, 1762.

Catherine was woken
in her bed at Peterhof

with the news that a coup
was already underway.

Now events began to move
at headlong speed.

Catherine came racing
through these palace grounds

to get to her carriage,
to be taken to St. Petersburg.

She didn't even pause to get ready,

she had to have her hair done
in the coach on the way.

When she got to St. Petersburg
she was declared sovereign.

And her husband Peter?
Well, he was caught napping.

When he got to hear
about what was going on,

it was too late, he'd lost his crown.

In tears, Peter stepped down.

He'd reigned for just six months.

Within a few days,
he was rather conveniently dead.

Officially the reason
was "hemorrhoidal colic",

but it was more likely murder.

The nature, if any, of Catherine's
involvement, remains a mystery.

Catherine was now
the most powerful woman in the world,

she was the sole ruler of Russia.

And despite
all of her intellectual interests,

she had shown utter ruthlessness
in grabbing the throne.

But don't forget
that she wasn't a real Russian,

she'd only married into
the Romanov family.

It was going to be a considerable
challenge for her to hold on to her power.

Catherine ensured that she had
a formal coronation as soon as possible

to seal her legitimacy.

In the magnificent Hermitage Museum
in St. Petersburg,

once home
to Catherine's personal art collection,

there's a portrait
by the Danish artist Vigilius Eriksen,

that captures the new Empress
in all her coronation finery.

Catherine had a new crown and orb designed
for the coronation

and she's sporting
these rather wonderful robes,

embroidered with the emblem
of Imperial Russia,

the double-headed eagle.

What do you think can have been
going through her mind at her coronation?

On the one hand she was an imposter.
She was German after all.

It was only through slight of hands
that she had that crown on her head.

On the other hand,

there's something very attractively modern
about this 18th-century woman

so relentlessly pursuing
power and success.

And this meant relentlessly managing
every single aspect of her brand.

Catherine was brilliant at using
her clothes to create her personal image.

She managed to convey
all the different things

that people expected
of a modern, female, Russian sovereign,

as you can see in her surviving dresses
at the Hermitage Museum.

Nina, when did Catherine the Great
wear this dress?

Catherine the Great
wore it during the festivals

of the guard regiments

because she was
a chief of guards regiment.

It is uniform because of color,

because of numbers of buttons.

- Ah, the officers had the...
- Officers, yes.

- ...had the same number of buttons.
- The same numbers, yes.

The shape of collar is also.

- Ah, it has the collar of a man's uniform?
- The collar, yes.

Like in a man's uniform.

- And in the back you can see...
- Yes.

...very interesting details.

- Ah, so this, this shape...
- Is the shape of the back.

- That's like a man's coat.
- Yes.

- And two details decorated with braids.
- Yes.

NINA: Also like a man's uniform.

It's also the dress of a woman
who looks to Europe, isn't it?

Yes, of course.

The French influence
is in the shape of the sleeves.

- Yes.
- You can see.

And of course pannier.

Oh, the panniers. The shape like that.

Yes, yes, yes. I see that.

- And is the silk French?
- No, the silk is Russian.

Catherine the Great ordered
to use only Russian silk

in the costumes of Russian Imperial Court.

So, Nina, this is a fantastic dress.
It's the dress of an empress,

also of a male army officer,

also of somebody
who's very elegant who loves Europe,

- but also the dress of a true Russian.
- Yes.

- All in one.
- All in one. (CHUCKLES)

LUCY: Back in the Peterhof Palace,

Catherine can be seen wearing
the royal trousers

in another portrait by Vigilius Eriksen.

But although Catherine's military uniforms
were purely ceremonial,

she knew that her reputation
both in Russia and abroad,

would be earned by military success.

Her first great test came
just six years into her reign.

In 1768, Turkey declared war,
threatening Russia from the south.

On land, Russian troops
could match the Turks,

but Russia lacked naval power

in the crucial Mediterranean
and Black Sea regions.

Russia's only fleet

was the one Peter the Great had built
in the Baltic,

more than 1,000 miles away
from where it was now needed.

Catherine's lover and closest advisor,
Grigory Orlov,

now made a bold but risky proposal.

Catherine gave it the go-ahead.

The Russian fleet was to be cut in two,

and one part of it
was to go south down through the Baltic,

then all around western France and Spain
and in through the Strait of Gibraltar.

Then it would become by very definition
Russia's Mediterranean fleet.

(MILITARY DRILL MUSIC PLAYING)

In August 1769, the breakaway fleet
left Russia on its epic journey.

Finally, nearly a year later in June 1770,

the Russian ships under the command
of Grigory Orlov's brother Alexis,

took the Turkish fleet by surprise
off the coast of Anatolia.

(CANNONS EXPLODING)

The Battle of Chesma Bay
became one of the most

famous military engagements
in Russian history.

The Russians wiped out the Turkish fleet.

Nine thousand Turkish sailors were killed,
but the Russians lost only 30.

Russia's staggering victory

was the public relations coup
of a lifetime for Catherine.

Now, in paintings like this one
by Heinrich Buchholtz,

she could present herself as the true heir
to the man who had built Imperial Russia.

This picture celebrates
a triumph by her fleet over the Turks.

Here are the boats in the boatyards,

and here are some very unhappy Turks
being marched through St. Petersburg.

And over here in the corner
is Peter the Great himself,

being asked to admire this image

of Catherine
being carried through the skies by Fame.

And he certainly is admiring her.

Look what he's doing
with his hands he's saying,

"Wow, Catherine! Haven't you done well!"

And while Catherine
never led armies into battle,

she found other ways
to lead from the front.

Because the Russian people
faced an even deadlier threat than Turkey.

This enemy was ravaging Europe,
and it spared neither peasant nor monarch.

It was smallpox.

Catherine was rightly terrified that she
or her son Paul, might catch the disease.

But word reached her
that an English physician,

Thomas Dimsdale,
was achieving unprecedented success

with a controversial method
of smallpox inoculation.

The method is called variolation
and it involves scratching the skin,

opening up the skin,
and inserting some part of the disease.

So effectively you are infecting
the patient with smallpox,

and that of course makes it very risky.

It's one of the reasons
why it divided the enlightened world.

Many mathematicians for example,

objected to it on the grounds
of probability theory.

They thought that sooner or later,

you know people are going to die
from this operation.

LUCY: Catherine decided that the risk
was worth taking.

Dimsdale was invited to St. Petersburg.

There he found
a suitable sample of smallpox

with which to inoculate the Empress.

But it was all very hush-hush.

Late one night,
Dimsdale was brought into the palace

through a secret door,

and in Catherine's rooms,
he inoculated her.

Now a lot of her contemporaries

would have thought
that she was mad to do this.

She could have been infected.
She could have died.

But she'd looked
at the scientific evidence

and she was happy to run the risk.

She even had Orlov
and her son Paul inoculated too.

And when it became clear that everything
had gone well, the news was proclaimed.

Other people started doing it.

Inoculation caught on
and countless lives were saved.

Her smallpox inoculation

shows Catherine behaving
like a true enlightened monarch

embracing science, banishing superstition,
improving the lot of her people.

And this room
in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg

is almost a shrine to Catherine,
the great progressive.

These well turned-out young ladies
on the walls,

were pupils at the rather wonderfully
named Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens,

which Catherine founded in 1764.

Its stated purpose was to raise

"educated women, good mothers
and useful members of family and society."

It was the first proper educational
establishment for women, in Russia.

Catherine was so proud of her girls

that she had these portraits
by Dmitry Levitsky,

commissioned to show them off.

This statue presents Catherine
in the guise of Minerva,

the Roman goddess of wisdom,
and icon of the Enlightenment.

A horn of plenty overflows.

Her hand rests
on an open book of legislation.

And the sculptor, Fedot Shubin
has tucked Catherine's crown,

the conventional symbol of royal power,
discretely away round the back.

But none of this disguises the fact
that for all of her enlightened leanings,

Catherine still had the absolute
power of a despot.

And she was in no hurry to give it up.

I don't think Catherine
would have seen a contradiction

between Enlightenment values
and her powers.

For a start, she would dispute
that she was a despot.

She considered that her absolute power

was tempered by laws within Russia,
by institutions within Russia,

which prevented Russia
from succumbing to arbitrary rule.

And as an absolute ruler,

I think she thought that she was
in the best position to implement laws,

which would be in the spirit
of the Enlightenment.

LUCY: In 1767,
just five years into her reign,

Catherine embarked
on an ambitious nationwide attempt

to turn Enlightenment principles
into actual laws.

She convened
a special legislative commission,

with representatives ranging
from nobles to peasants,

drawn from all across the country.

Catherine herself wrote the commission

a lengthy set of instructions,
known in Russian as the Nakaz.

She declared that all citizens
should be equal before the law,

that torture should be banned.

Liberty was her central theme.

For a while,

Catherine looked more forward-thinking
than any of her European counterparts,

and she made sure that they knew it.

The Nakaz was translated
into French and German.

But actually Catherine had already watered
down her original plans for the Nakaz.

In particular, the reform of serfdom.

In her first draft of the Nakaz,
her great instruction

to the legislative commission in 1767,

there was a chapter which implied
that serfs ought to be freed,

or at least some of them
should be freed gradually.

And this when it was read by her advisors
was just thought far too revolutionary.

And Catherine was,
I think, genuinely surprised

that even some of her closest friends,

some of the most enlightened people
in the empire,

were so reluctant to do anything
about serfdom, it took her aback.

But it made her realize

the extent to which serfdom just underpins
everything in the Russian Empire.

LUCY: Catherine's failure to address
the continuing existence of serfdom,

meant that millions of people

remained little better
than the slaves of landowners.

Their plight now helped fuel

the greatest domestic threat
to Catherine's reign.

In 1773,

a Cossack called Yemelyan Pugachov,
sparked a provincial revolt.

It spread, quickly.

Pugachov's idea was to pretend to be
the deposed tsar,

Peter III, Catherine's late husband.

His line was that he'd just been away,
he'd been in Egypt, but now he was back.

He very quickly gathered around him

a massive movement
of Russia's disenfranchised.

Pugachov said that as the true tsar,

he would grant the serfs
all kinds of new rights,

and that they should rise up against
their evil landlords.

They did this,
and in the resulting bloodbath,

more than 1500 nobles were killed,
half of them women and children.

Panic now gripped St. Petersburg.

Catherine was forced to find
a military solution to a civilian problem.

Soldiers and top commanders
were switched from fighting Turks,

to fighting their fellow Russians
in rebellious areas.

It was nearly two years before
the revolt was finally quashed.

Pugachov was taken to Moscow in a cage,

then he was hanged and his body quartered,

which in Russia means
that the limbs were lopped off.

The immediate threat was over.

But how was Catherine going to respond
to this rebellion?

With reform, or with repression?

The Pugachov revolt
was a great shock to Catherine,

and particularly the sense
that this could happen in this country,

and that so much of it
was out of her control.

And her response was to try
to spread her control,

and so she brought in
various local government reforms

and wanted...
Again, it's this great desire to educate.

The fact that people could believe

that this man was the tsar
come back to life, that...

She was horrified.

And so her urge was to spread her control,
to improve education,

to make sure that local government
was properly reformed.

It certainly wasn't to abolish serfdom.

LUCY: Catherine had sacrificed
the rights of the serfs

to keep the nobility on her side,

in spite of her professed
Enlightenment values.

And nowhere were the contradictions
of her reign more evident,

than at the summer palaces
of the wealthiest nobles.

The Kuskovo Palace and Estate near Moscow,
belonged to the Sheremetev family.

By the late 18th century,

they were the most important patrons
of the arts outside St. Petersburg.

Taking their lead from Catherine herself,

the Sheremetevs filled their palace
with European treasures,

like these Flemish tapestries.

But it was the concerts
and operas staged here

that made Kuskovo famous,

bringing the arts to a wider audience
than just the elite.

Ludmilla, what was it like in the 1770s

when Count Sheremetev
had his big concerts?

(SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

The doors were open to
all who wished to come.

But you had to know how to
behave and dress properly.

So the people who came
were from the highest class

and those who could afford it.

But the performers,

they weren't the sort of
professional actors and musicians

that we think of today?

They had been serf actors
since early childhood.

Boys and girls, "not too ugly of face"
as they said back then

were selected at the age of 7 or 8.

They were taught Italian and French,
how to play instruments,

to read and write, behave
well, dance and sing.

So the serf children were taken
at seven or eight from their families?

They were supposed to
lose their peasant roots.

Unfortunately they ended up caught
between their origin

and a class to which they didn’t belong.

LUCY: The Sheremetevs' star performer
was Praskovia Kovalyova.

Despite her serf origins,

she became one of the most
celebrated opera singers in Russia.

Catherine the Great herself
heard Praskovia perform at Kuskovo.

Praskovia also won the heart
of Count Sheremetev's son, Nikolai.

After a long affair,
they secretly married.

(OPERA MUSIC PLAYING)

These mounds are all that remain
of the open-air theater

where Praskovia
and her fellow serfs, performed.

Now you might think
this sounds awfully romantic.

The beautiful Praskovia
standing here on the stage

singing a heartfelt aria to the Count,

her secret lover
in the audience over there.

But it isn't romantic, it's creepy

when you consider

where the balance of power
between them lay.

Count Sheremetev owned Praskovia
and her entire family,

along with the rest
of his 200,000 other serfs.

In a world where serfdom existed,

there were so many opportunities
for exploitation,

particularly sexual exploitation
of the female serfs.

It hardly bears thinking about.

Of course performers, artists
and musicians

made up just a tiny fraction
of Russia's serf population.

Most of them continued to work
in the fields,

driving the Russian economy.

And they made up the bulk
of the Russian army,

fueling the expansion
of Catherine's empire,

an expansion that was extraordinary
in both its speed and scale.

Catherine annexed large stretches
of Belarus and Lithuania.

Poland became a Russian dependency,

and crucially she seized the Crimea.

Just as Peter the Great
founded St. Petersburg

to secure access to the Baltic,

Catherine now founded
the major ports of Sevastopol and Odessa,

to guarantee Russia access
to the Black Sea.

Countless Russian and foreign lives
were lost in the process,

but Catherine doesn't seem
to have been much troubled by this.

But the other great powers of Europe
were troubled.

They knew that Russia had now become
a key player in world affairs.

Catherine had to be courted.
She had to be feared.

Here's a British satirical print
from 1791 called An Imperial Stride.

And it shows Catherine the Great of Russia

striding from Russia,
right over to Constantinople.

Look, she's got her toe
on the tip of a crescent moon.

Meanwhile, all the European great powers

are understandably worried
about Russia's expansion.

But they're also taking the opportunity
to look up Catherine's skirt.

Here's King George III
of Great Britain for example,

and he's saying,
"What, what, what a prodigious expansion."

"Never saw anything like it,"
says Louis XVI of France.

While the Sultan of Turkey declares,

"The whole Turkish Army
wouldn't satisfy her."

I think it's inevitable that Catherine,

as a powerful woman,
was targeted with sexual slanders.

And it is true
that she had quite a lot of lovers.

Although he shouldn't be here.

There isn't any truth
to the rumors of her and the horse,

though they are quite persistent.

But she had no time for horses,
she was just too busy with all these men.

In 1774,

she began an affair with a guards officer,
Grigory Potemkin.

Catherine called him,

"My colossus, my golden cockerel,
my tiger!"

He rose to be the commander in chief
of the Russian army,

and effectively her co-ruler.

Potemkin was the love of Catherine's life.

It's even possible
that they had a secret marriage.

And his influence endured
even as she took other lovers.

As she got older
they tended to be guards officers,

much younger than she was.

When she was 60,
she took a last lover, Platon Zubov.

He was 21.

Go, Catherine.

It's amazing that she still began
each relationship

with massive hope that this was the one

and, and there was that romantic,

not necessarily sexual sense
as she got old, but very romantic.

This person I can love,
he's going to love me.

There's also increasingly the sense
that they're largely for companionship.

She used to love walking through
her art collection,

going through her collection of cameos,

pouring over them,
cataloging them together.

And so you get a sense
of platonic enjoyment,

that brief time in her day
when she could relax

and, and feel that she could be herself.
But constantly that need to be loved.

LUCY: Catherine's other great passion
was her palaces.

But unlike the grand statements
of the Winter Palace and Peterhof,

her own commissions
have a more tranquil atmosphere.

The Catherine Palace,
south of St. Petersburg,

was originally built by
the Empress Elizabeth in a Baroque style.

But Catherine employed
a Scottish architect, Charles Cameron,

to add on a beautiful,
classically-inspired annex,

more in tune with her own tastes.

Although the rooms are inspired
by Classical architecture,

they're constructed with a whole rainbow
of Russian materials.

Like the marble,

the jasper

and the porphyry.

Although they're small in scale,
they are incredibly rich.

When they were complete,

Catherine walked through
with her architect Mr. Cameron

admiring them,
but she was also heard to sigh,

(GASPS) "Oh, but the cost, the cost."

The gallery also offered Catherine
the perfect vantage point to look out

over her English-style landscape gardens,

a fashion that swept Europe
in the late 18th century.

English garden design had become
another of her passions.

She tried to seduce the British
royal gardener, Mr. Capability Brown,

to come over to Russia to work for her.

She even shelled out a small fortune

for a set of drawings of the gardens
at Hampton Court Palace,

under what was actually
the mistaken impression

that Capability Brown
had designed them himself.

But this was one of her rare failures.

Capability Brown said, "Nyet,"

to Catherine the Great.
He wasn't going to come to Russia.

Catherine gave her young lover
Platon Zubov

apartments adjacent to her own.

Her grandsons came here to play.

Their father, the Grand Duke Paul,
was a less frequent visitor.

Like Peter the Great,

Catherine had a troubled relationship
with her own son.

Paul's obsession with military ritual

and his lack of interest
in culture and ideas,

meant that he took after his father,
whom Catherine had of course, usurped.

She found her eldest grandson Alexander
much more of a kindred spirit.

The classical annex and its gardens,

offered a consoling ideal
of order and rationality.

But in Europe, the Enlightenment dream
was turning into a darker reality.

Catherine was horrified by the execution
of Louis XVI in 1793

following the French Revolution.

VIRGINIA ROUNDING: To begin with,
there's a sense that

the seriousness of the French Revolution
didn't dawn on Catherine.

It seems she had never imagined
that this could be the outcome

of what she'd read in her youth.

In a way, it was that split in her

between what she liked intellectually
and what she saw as possible for a ruler.

And the idea that, that Voltaire

and his free-thinking had led to this,

to the collapse of a monarchy,
was utterly horrifying.

LUCY: Even in her old age,
Catherine worked indefatigably.

She rose at 7:00 in the morning,

she drank strong coffee and then
she wrote in her office till 9:00.

She spent the morning
listening to reports,

the afternoon reading
and going through her correspondence.

For all her palace building
and patronage of the arts,

for all the diplomatic
and military successes of her reign,

it was in her commitment

to the quiet, steady,
backroom work of government,

that Catherine was perhaps
at her greatest.

A portrait of the Empress
with one of her beloved greyhounds,

painted towards the end of her life,
shows them out for a stroll.

As she walked her dog in this park,

Catherine could have looked back
on a life of extraordinary achievements,

and there were tangible reminders of them
in the monuments all about her.

But poignantly,
she had little faith in the future,

particularly under her son
and successor, Paul.

"My labor and care,

"and warm concern
for the good of the Empire,

"will be in vain," she once wrote.

"Because my son hasn't inherited
my frame of mind."

On the 5th of November 1796,
Catherine suffered a stroke.

Hours later, she died.

She was 67.

That very morning,
she'd risen early as usual

and gone through her papers,

working for the Russian Empire
to the very end.

But now the throne
went to her embittered son, Paul.

The day he was crowned, he changed the law

so that no woman would ever sit
on the Russian throne again.

Catherine's suspicion of Paul

and preference for his son Alexander,
looked to be well-founded.

Catherine could have disinherited Paul,
but there were two problems with that.

One is that any suggestion of doing that

could have given rise
to some sort of conspiracy,

or even a coup against herself.

She of course had come to the throne
by virtue of a coup.

She was very sensitive to the fact
that monarchs could be replaced

by this method.

That was one danger I think
that she faced.

The other one was

that if you're going to have a conspiracy
you've got to have a conspirator,

and Alexander didn't show any willingness
whatsoever as far as one can tell,

to take on that mantle
and to take his father's place

as Catherine's heir.

LUCY: As well as undermining
his mother's legacy,

Paul soon alienated the court

by his fixation
with religious and military ritual.

Concerns also grew
among the powerful guards regiments

about Paul's erratic foreign policy.

While Catherine had commanded
widespread affection,

Emperor Paul knew full well
that he was loathed,

just as his father Peter III had been.

And he knew how that had turned out.

In the center of St. Petersburg,

the increasingly-paranoid Paul
built the forbidding St. Michael's Castle.

It was surrounded by a moat
and armed with cannons.

Here Paul could lock himself
in every night

with his sons Alexander and Constantine.

But when the end came,

all his attempts
at security counted for nothing.

One night in March 1801, conspirators
forced their way into the royal bedchamber

and a grim farce followed.

Emperor Paul tried
to hide behind a fire screen,

but he left his feet sticking out
and they got spotted.

The conspirators tried to arrest him,
and then a fight broke out.

The Emperor got bashed over the head with
a lethal weapon. It was a snuff box.

A few moments later he was dead,

so the conspirators went
to wake up Paul's son, Alexander,

a few bedrooms away.

Alexander was horrified
about what had happened,

so the conspirators said to him,
"Man up, Alexander, stop whimpering.

"It's time for you to rule."

Catherine had seen her grandson
as her true heir.

A future Russian Alexander the Great.

Alexander had the typical
male Romanov love of uniforms

and military etiquette,

but he shared Catherine's
reforming instincts,

although he did lack
her independence of mind.

(ORDERING IN RUSSIAN)

Alexander came to the throne at a time
when Napoleon Bonaparte

was upending Europe.

Russia joined Austria and Britain
in a coalition against Napoleon,

and Alexander soon faced him
on the battlefield.

(MILITARY DRUMS PLAYING)

Napoleon was a military man
who fancied himself as an emperor,

but Alexander was an emperor who fancied
himself as a military man.

But it all went wrong for Alexander.

In 1805 at the Battle of Austerlitz,
he'd taken command of the army himself.

But he'd asked them to attack prematurely,
it was disastrous.

(SOLDIERS YELLING)

Many of the Russians and their allies
the Austrians, were killed.

Alexander realized that this
had been his own fault.

He was so upset about it
that he burst into tears

and he had to be sedated with opium.

He also had to make peace with Napoleon.

(ORDERING IN RUSSIAN)

LUCY: Alexander was summoned
to Tilsit in Prussia.

Napoleon had two major demands.

Russia was to join
the economic blockade of Britain,

the so-called Continental System,

and France was to get control
of Russia's neighbor, Poland.

The two emperors signed their peace treaty
on a barge in the middle of a river.

A wobbly setting for a wobbly deal.

JANET HARTLEY: On the surface
the Treaty of Tilsit

was a meeting of two equals.

The reality was though that these were
not equals. Napoleon was the boss.

Why did Tilsit break down?

Well, it broke down because
that sort of imbalance

always has to be an unstable treaty.

In economic terms, it proved
almost impossible

for Russia to continue to be a member
of the Continental System.

But much more important than that,
it was quite intolerable

for Alexander and for Russia,
for Napoleon to control Poland.

That was never going to be acceptable.

LUCY: Behind Napoleon's back,

Alexander resumed trade
with France's great enemy, Britain.

By 1812, Napoleon had had enough.

He decided that he could bend Alexander
to his will by invading Russia.

Well, so he thought.

Napoleon was now facing an Alexander
who was older and wiser.

Alexander wasn't going to make
the same mistake as at Austerlitz in 1805.

This time he left the command of his army
to the professionals.

Rather than meet
Napoleon's mighty army head on,

the Russian commanders drew
the French deeper and deeper

inside the country,
stretching their supply lines.

Meanwhile, from the safety
of St. Petersburg,

Alexander tried to govern his empire
and rally his people.

On September the 7th 1812,
the Russians under General Kutuzov

finally confronted Napoleon
at Borodino near Moscow.

For Napoleon, it was now or never.

His forces and resources
were at their limit.

Borodino was a huge battle,
involving a quarter of a million troops.

And it was commemorated
in this huge panoramic painting

by the artist Franz Roubaud.

A hundred and fifteen meters long,
it's housed in a purpose-built museum

in Moscow.

And what tricks has he used to,
to bring this alive as a painter?

Well, for example do you see
the Russian cavalry which are taking

- the French positions.
- Yes.

The troopers' heads are much more numerous
than the heads of horses.

So he's made it look like a mass
by doing lots and lots of heads,

- and not so many bodies.
- Well, it was most important

for the painter to give the impression
of cavalry in attack.

- Yes.
- Which was furious and very quick,

and very exciting.

So, are we right at the frontline here?
These are the Russians coming up

- to meet the French?
- (BAYONET FIRING)

BORIS PROSKURIN: Yes, and they are
starting a counter-attack

against the French troops.

(SOLDIERS YELLING)

Also a column of French infantry
is attacking the Russian position.

Also, French cannons are firing
at the Russian position.

(CANNONS FIRING)

(EXPLOSIONS)

(HORSE NEIGHING)

(CANNON FIRING)

(BAYONETS FIRING)

Hang on, haven't we missed out Napoleon?

- Well, Napoleon...
- Where is he?

Well, you've missed Napoleon already.

- Is that Napoleon on a white horse?
- Yes, this is Napoleon,

and these are some of his bodyguards.

Now this is said to have been
the most deadly single day

- of fighting in history, isn't it?
- It probably was.

LUCY: In what league of casualties
are we talking about?

PROSKURIN: Both sides lost
about 20,000 troops.

Many more were wounded
and many more died after the battle.

Did anybody on the day actually
know who'd won?

Well, Napoleon claimed
that he won the battle,

and Kutuzov also said
that he defeated Napoleon himself.

Leo Tolstoy said that the Russian side
scored a moral victory,

because the Russian army, many soldiers
of which were inexperienced,

fought on equal terms
with a very strong army

which was made up of best European troops.

Before the battle, Russian troops
were preparing for death.

They didn't want to give up Moscow.

LUCY: So it was a victory
for the French really.

PROSKURIN: Not exactly.

If you were French,

would you still tell me that this
wasn't a victory for Napoleon?

- Perhaps not.
- (LAUGHING)

LUCY: What mattered was that
Napoleon had failed to destroy

the Russian forces at Borodino.

He realized that this was
an unwinnable campaign.

But he found
a consolation prize near to hand.

(BELL TOLLING)

The Russians were too weakened
to defend Moscow,

the city was left wide open
for Napoleon to take.

This should have been
a terrific moment for Napoleon.

After all, St. Petersburg may have been
the country's official capital,

but Moscow was still its spiritual heart.

Tsars were still crowned
in The Kremlin just there.

But the Russians weren't going
to give Napoleon the satisfaction

of officially
surrendering their city to him.

Instead, they just abandoned it,
leaving it barely governable.

Looting quickly broke out.

And far more deadly, fire.

Whether they were caused
by accident or arson,

the flames devastated
a city still largely built of wood.

More than three quarters of Moscow
was destroyed.

For Alexander, the struggle against
Napoleon now took on divine proportions.

(EXPLOSION)

He declared that the salvation
of his own soul,

rested on whether he could
save Europe from ruin.

At 10:00 on the morning
of March the 31st 1814,

nearly a year and a half after
the burning of Moscow,

Paris resounded to the arrival
of a victorious army.

But it wasn't the French returning home
in triumph,

it was the forces allied against them.

And at their head was Alexander.

No foreign conqueror had reached Paris
since Henry V of England

400 years before.

But Alexander was magnanimous.

He presented himself more
as a liberator than a conqueror.

He even rode on a horse that
the French themselves had given him

five years before,

and he promised them that
they needn't worry about Paris.

Unlike Moscow, their city would be safe.

And on the very same day he made
a public declaration

that the allies would recognize
and guarantee a new French constitution.

And while Parisians witnessed the exotic
sight of Cossacks setting up camp

on the Champs-Elysees,

Alexander's great adversary Napoleon
was packed off into exile.

So how had it all gone so wrong
so quickly for Napoleon,

and so right for Alexander?

Well, after the destruction of Moscow,

Napoleon had ordered
his grand army to withdraw from Russia.

But, on the way back they got caught

in a ferocious winter
that devastated their ranks.

Then, for more than a year,
Russia and its allies

had pursued Napoleon's
weakened forces across Europe.

Now Paris was theirs.

How Alexander must
have savored this moment.

It was as glorious a moment
as any Romanov had achieved

in the history of the dynasty.

Earlier Russian monarchs like
his grandmother Catherine the Great,

had aspired to French sophistication.

But now Alexander had
the chance to show the French

how things were done properly.

How a truly civilized nation
behaved in victory.

Russian troops remained
in Paris for several months.

There's even a story that the very
Parisian idea of a bistro

dates back to 1814.

The word in Russian means "quickly."

And this cafe claims to be the first

to take its name from hungry Russians
shouting, "Food.

"Bistro!"

But there was the whiff
of something dangerous

among the Russian troops,

especially some of the officers.

The campaign in Europe had exposed
the Russian officers to countries

that didn't have
the pernicious practice of serfdom,

countries where the ruler
didn't have unlimited powers.

This was very exciting.

You can imagine them sitting
in Parisian cafes

and saying to each other,

"How come Tsar Alexander is going
to let the French have a new constitution,

"but he won't let us have one at all?"

This meant that when they got home,
some of them would be ready to call

for unprecedented change

and quickly.

Bistro! Bistro!

(REGAL MUSIC PLAYING)